The Lying Season (Seasons #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,4
I had never been able to pull apart. How the fuck was I going to do it now?
My phone buzzed just as I stepped back into my office, prepared to lock myself away all afternoon and obsess endlessly about this issue. As one did.
Just got to Coffee Grounds and managed to snag a table. I’ll grab our drinks. See you soon!
“Oh, right. Fuck.” I’d forgotten about my coffee meeting with English. I jumped out of my seat and grabbed my purse on the way. “I’m out for a meeting. I’ll be back in thirty.”
“Roger that,” Aspen said. She gave me a little salute as I passed.
I was out the door and jogging the few blocks to my favorite coffee shop in the East Village. Somehow, I managed to only be ten minutes late. It might be a record.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, plopping into the seat across from my friend.
English removed her enormous sunglasses and brushed her long Hollywood blonde hair off of her shoulders. “You’re always late.”
“Well, yeah, but this time, I have a reason.”
“You were in a meeting for the campaign and forgot?” She laughed as my eyes rounded and pushed my drink toward me. “I know you too well. Now, drink up before it gets cold.”
I took a fortifying drink of my coffee. This was going to suck.
“Sam is back,” I blurted out.
Her bright blue eyes rounded. “Sam? Like, the Sam?”
“Yeah. Yep. He’s here. In New York City. And I don’t know what to do,” I told her in a rush.
“Wait, what?” she spat. “Sam Rutherford, the guy who did you dirty on the last campaign, the guy who ran your heart over with his truck and then blamed you? That Sam? Please tell me you didn’t actually talk to him.”
“He just got a job in my fucking office,”
“No way. What a douche!” she gasped out. “He had the nerve to get a job where you already work? What, did he use you as a reference to get an in?”
I shook my head. “No. As far as I know, he didn’t even know that I worked there. He thought I was still working for my parents.”
“Ew.”
“Tell me about it. But it was what he’d thought was the plan before our fallout. So, I think he probably didn’t know I worked for the mayor. It’s not like my picture is on the website.”
“Girl, we are going to need to get something stronger than coffee to deal with this conversation,” English said.
“You’re not wrong,” I said, gulping down the coffee. “What am I going to do? He’s in legal. It’s probably the department I deal with the least, but it’s not a big office. I’m going to have to see him every day from now until November.”
English reached into her bag and pulled out a planner that was stuffed to the brim with notes and tabs and stickers. She flipped until she found a blank page, immediately going into fixer mode. She might look like a movie star, but she chose to handle their publicity and generally clean up everyone’s messes instead of acting herself. Her work as a celebrity publicist was top notch. She was one of the best in the business back in LA. And she worked nearly as hard and as many hours as I did to prove it, and that was saying something.
“Let’s make a list of what we can do,” she said. “First things first. I’m not saying that I know someone who could plant blow on him so that he could get fired, but…I do work with rockstars.”
I burst into laughter. “I love you, but no. I can’t do that. Bad Lark might have considered that option, but that’s not who I want to be anymore.”
“You act like Bad Lark is a physically different entity than you,” English said, jotting the word blow down on the Maybe list.
“I hope she is,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t want to get him fired. I don’t want to jeopardize his career or anything. I just…don’t know what to do.”
English put her pen down. She sighed. “Because you still care about him.”
I bit my lip. “And I hate him.”
“And you’re wondering if this is your second chance.”
I immediately shook my head and then frowned and nodded slowly. “I don’t know. Can we get past what we did to each other? Five years is a long time. I’m a different person than I was. Maybe he’s different too.”